


new on exhibit

by peaktotheocean



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: 5+1 Things, And Pre-Heists, Fluff, Gen, Heist, M/M, Museums
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:47:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28825437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peaktotheocean/pseuds/peaktotheocean
Summary: Four letters between Joe and Nicky that are currently on display at various historical institutions, one in private hands, and one that is too filthy to be put on exhibit
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 21
Kudos: 399





	new on exhibit

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Tale of Jaskier's Grudge Against Historians (and how they gave him his happy ending anyway)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24047341) by [notebooksandlaptops](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notebooksandlaptops/pseuds/notebooksandlaptops). 



> [tumblr user vamprisms: *at the museum* my love, why is my cursed amulet in this display case](https://vamprisms.tumblr.com/post/634964159397855232/at-the-museum-my-love-why-is-my-cursed-amulet)

**1.**  
**British Library**  
**Love letter**  
**Unknown**  
**08-09-1885**

_Our son grows restless._  
_Come home to me, my dear._  
_One piece, only._

  
"Son?" Nile asked.

"Booker," Joe and Nicky answered at the same time.

Nicky took a step closer, almost forgetting that there was plexiglass between him and the letter in his own handwriting. "He was young then."

"He's still young," Joe interjected.

"I mean," Nicky was slow to explain, as if he had to thumb through memories of their life then before answering. "It was too fresh for him still. He was all anger."

"Now he's just _mostly_ anger."

Joe wagged his finger at the exhibition case. "This one I know to be stolen."

"Small order in this place," Nile murmured and Joe beamed at her like a proud father. 

It was just the three of them in the small room full of standalone plexiglass-topped pillars, each with a separate small piece of paper in it. A sign at the entrance had explained they were frequently rotated in order to save them from potential light damage. Nile wasn't sure if it was luck or Nicky that they had come here during the letter's time out of the storage archives. 

"Perhaps we could just ask for it back. We'll just say that this letter from--" Nicky checked the exhibit label-- "The 19th century is ours and politely request its return. It has worked out so well for other countries in the past."  
  
"You need to write it into EU agreements," Nile suggested. Nicky's smiles came easy but their appearance still felt like an accomplishment. She wasn't sure how he managed that.

"Of course. We have many of those in the works."

For his part, Joe was more focused on the glass that was between them and the worn piece of paper that had been folded lovingly folded by his Nicolò's dexterous fingers all those decades ago. 

"Where were we then?" He asked softly.

"São Paulo."

"Ah. And yet it ended up here."

"So did we. Distance is nothing, in the long run."

Nile watched the two of them. Joe tugged on Nicky to kiss the side of his head, using his thumb to rub at the spot afterwards. Nicky leaned into it. "You make it sound so simple."

"If you start thinking about it too much, you'll just go mad. It's easier to keep it simple." Joe held out his hand to draw her into the embrace. 

It wasn't the first time either of them had done this and she wasn't sure what to think at first but...she could keep it simple. They were her family now. It was one of the easiest ways he knew how to offer comfort. It worked too. Simple.

**2.**  
**The Metropolitan Museum of Art**  
**Beloved**  
**Fragment**  
**Ink on linen**  
**circa 16th century**  
**94.4.172**

[Translation]

 _Beloved_  
_I have no use for honey_  
_What can the bees give me_  
_That is as sweet as you_  
_And your-_ -

  
"The word had just been well, invented," Joe explained. "Used, I supposed."

"Beloved?" Nile asked.

"Beloved," Nicky repeated with a wholly different inflection, his eyes still on the words behind glass. Words Joe still told him every day, whispered before they fell asleep, showed him with his actions. 

"Yes," Joe answered, watching Nicky. He could see the beginnings of a smile on his face. It was not shy, but rather just private. "It was one of the first times in English that I felt-- yes, this is the word. A word for us."

 _Beloved_ , Nicky mouthed again, this time with no sound, as though he was just trying to frame the shape perfectly.

"And you used it to write him filthy poetry?"

"It is not _filthy_." 

Nile couldn't tell if Joe was joking or not. It could go either way. She hadn't meant it as dirty, not really. Just as a slang for erotic. He did not seem mad though. He was still smiling at Nicky so she supposed all was forgiven if there had even been a grudge in the first place.

"Do you think the museum cut off the rest of the letter or did they find it that way?" She asked.

"I can hazard a guess," Nicky said dryly. He moved closer to Joe. "Beloved," he tried again, this time aloud, quiet but firm, sent like a whisper on a vital mission.

His beloved was with him. Joe had both. The honey and Nicky. He still only needed one.

**3.**  
**Harvard Library**  
**Archives and Manuscripts**  
**Personal correspondence between intimate friends**  
**Mid 19th century**  
**2008.10.01**

_Nicolò,_  
_When will I see you again outside of my dreams? The days grow shorter and still you have not returned to my side. If this keeps up, I will set out on the solstice towards and for you._  
_Yours_

  
Nile did a double-take and took a step backwards towards the case. The letter was sitting atop a clear plastic mount, a thin strip of clear plastic holding it in place. She had been wandering through the exhibit without really reading some of the letters. Still, she couldn't miss the name.

Or the longing.

"I didn't realize we were here for a reason."

"Hmm?" Nicky looked closer. "Oh, good catch. I did not know about-- Joe?" He interrupted himself. "Did you know about this one?"

Joe hummed, almost the same note Nicky had just done. He came up behind him and rested a chin on his shoulder. His eyes widened a little at he saw his own handwriting staring back up at him. "I wrote this, yes. I did not know it had been caught and filed away."

"Intimate friends," Nile read off of the label text. "In-ti-mate _friends_ ," she stressed. "Is this a joke?"

Joe snorted. He ran his fingers over the embossed words on the wall, as though he could rub them out of the plastic. "Just a single man inquiring about the future travel plans of another. Very heterosexual."

"Two book-loving bachelors, I'm sure," Nicky hummed. "Never married. Couldn't keep a wife."

"Who needs a wife? I have you. You promised to be back in two weeks and it was a month before I had even heard from you."

"How often did you split up?" Nile asked before a potential argument could turn into bickering and flirting. The library was closing soon and she still had a whole other wing of the building to wander through.

"Too much," Joe said instantly. Nicky inclined his head in agreement. "There were some things we could not be together for. Or had to split up in order to lay low."

"I hated seeing you in my dreams because I knew it was only because you were not with me," Nicky admitted. "You did come get me though."

"I always will."

**4.**  
**Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library**  
**Temporary Exhibition**  
**Middle Ages Love Letters: Intent and Affection**  
**CN #108-01-08**

_Nicolò di Genova_  
_To where you are now, I pray I will be. If this note finds you before I, know I am coming._  
_Y._

  
"I don't remember this one."

"It never got to you."

"I still found you though." Nicky's brow was furrowed, trying to put together the pieces of that year. It had been hectic but necessary for them to separate. Daunting too, there was no way for them to plan a spot to meet. Their dreams were be slow to bring them back together and letters had the potential to be dangerous if in the wrong hands but, well, neither could resist.

"You did. It was one of the longer times we had ever been apart," Joe remembered.

They were talking to no one else. It was just the two of them in this museum with Nile off on her own for a bit but with a promise to meet up with them next month. Still, they both wanted to speak these words, the story aloud.

"That's my letter," Nicky insisted. 

"What?"

"It's mine. It never got to me."

Joe's expression softened and he placed a hand on Nicky's hip to steady himself before kissing him. When he pulled back, he whispered, "We're not stealing it."

He looked towards the glass door and walls but no one was coming. The exhibition space was so small and they had to be specially let it by a woman near three meters away who had pressed a button under her desk. Just them in the room. He kissed Nicky again.

"It's _mine_ ," Nicky repeated, as if Joe didn't hear him the first time.

"Other letters of ours are in collections all over the world. You've never seriously wanted them back before."

"I want all of them," Nicky said stubbornly. Joe waited for a little shrug that came a moment later. "Yes but I read those. Or wrote them. I never got this one. Your words meant for me being handled and read by everyone but me." Nicky's earnestness was and had been the literal death of Joe many times. Still, he could not deny him. 

"Not now, Nicolò. But," he said before Nicky could argue, "We will wait until it is back in storage."

  
**5.**  
**Private Collection**  
**London, England**

_A looking again. Nothing found yet. See you soon._

For all that they had spent centuries keeping their existence a secret, it was evident how much ephemera the group had truly left behind. Copley's office was lined with acid-free boxes each one with a meticulously labeled folders. Receipts that Joe could have sworn he had crumbled and thrown away, grocery lists in Booker's scrawl, signatures forged in one of Andy's many names.

"You have this one? How did you know it was ours? We did not sign them."

"Nicky does this little swoop on the bottom of his Ts." Copley pointed towards the letters. It was small but there. Still, it shouldn't have been that identifiable. 

"He does," Joe confirmed. "It's very cute," he added, trying to break the mounting tension. They were all self-aware of so much they already did. 

Surveillance and tracking in the world had become more of a problem in the last twenty years than the last nine centuries. Videos, cameras, and every superhero thinking a plain ballcap was somehow less conspicuous than one with a team logo. Joe's notebooks were already kept locked up and buried or burnt to a crisp. They'd never think of everything.

"A coincidence," Copley tried to reassure them. It didn't work nor did either of them appreciate the effort. In their experience, there was no such thing as a coincidence. 

Copley hefted a thick folder onto the desk. Joe kept a single finger on the slip of paper so it didn't get knocked away. "I was looking through other paperwork from a mission back in the 1940s. I just came across it mixed in with dozens of other correspondence."

The papers in the folder were not well-organized but Nicky recognized names, code words, mission locations. Whether he had been there, spying or participating, he couldn't remember the context.

"Lucky."

"Something like that."

**+1**  
**University of Pennsylvania Museum Library**  
**Archives Storage**  
**Row 2, Shelf 4, Box 1, Folder 6**

_Your fingers, my love/can do what mine cannot,  
_ _I long for the day/When I once again take--_

  
_The issue with older museums_ , Nile thought, _was that the windows were huge_.

Surely all the sunlight that poured in during the daytime wasn't good for the artifacts but the tall windows also weren't good when sneaking into the place either. It was almost too easy to catch the reflection of a small flashlight shining off the tile floors and through them. Immortality, she had discovered, didn't come with night vision. 

It didn't help that her partner tonight, had veered off-course. She could hear Joe a few aisles over but made sure she had secured a small pouch into her own bag, fixing the box back perfectly back in place onto the shelf before going after him.

He was elbows-deep in a completely different box from a whole other collection. "That is not what we're here for."

"It's not what _you're_ here for," Joe said slyly. "We all have our own agendas. Remember that." It was not said in a cruel way, but joking, just enough to make sure there wasn't a sting attached.

"What are you looking for?" She asked helpfully, leaning back to keep an eye on the door that was ten aisles down. All clear so far.

"A letter Nicky wrote to me. The first one he ever wrote to me. I think."

 _Of course_ , she thought, steering her brain away from Moose. 

Sometimes, she understood why Andy kept to herself, on her own. It wasn't easy but it was doable. Being around Nicky and Joe filled that emptiness in her that missed her family, hugs from parents, and someone knowing her preferences when it came to meals. Being seen, known. 

But at the same time, it reminded her of what they had and she didn't.

Still, that bitterness hadn't reached a tipping point for her just yet, not on this visit. Certainly not with Joe pulling a heist inside of a heist. They always kept Nile on her toes and she needed that sometimes too. She had missed them.

"And you think it's here?" Nile asked, fully present back in the archives, remembering how she was still holding a flashlight towards the ground.

The collection was vast certainly but Joe had done his research ahead of time just as she had. The difference of a few rows and shelves in this place traveled hundreds of years.

"He mentioned one of our safe houses from the crusades being ahhh...unearthed?" He questioned, looking at Nile. 

"Excavated," she supplied helpfully.

"Robbed," Joe said firmly. 

"And you think it came here? To Philadelphia?"

"This museum and school has committed many atrocities against history during its time. Thievery of artifacts is just one of them."

"Sure but we're in the university library. Wouldn't that be--" She stopped as Joe victoriously held up a small archival envelope. Nile came closer, keeping the flashlight still tilted towards the bottom of the shelves, with just enough of the outer part of the beam illuminating the object.

It seemed redundant to describe the sliver of paper as delicate but it was still the first word that popped into Nile's head when she looked at it. Joe held it out in the palm of his hand, beaming like she had only ever seen towards Nicky. Though she supposed this was also towards Nicky in a way.

"It's old," she ended up saying, which wasn't much better than "delicate" but it still got Joe to look up at her. 

"It's the first erotica he ever wrote me."

"So now we know why it wasn't on display," Nile said dryly. She was glad she couldn't read it though she's sure both of them would offer to translate it for her once they were all safe.

Joe huffed, "Yes, wouldn't want to scandalize all the grad students in the language department." He heaved back the rest of the box back into place on the shelf. "Come, there's a letter in a box a few aisles over that I would love to return to Booker just to see the look on his face." 

**Author's Note:**

> i realize this fic is very unrealistic. i mean, three people who go to a museum together all sticking together from room to room? preposterous


End file.
